Month: June 2017

Transparency is a large part of blockchain. Blockchain can be used in education to keep track of certificates and make sure certifications are not falsified.

Over time schools and universities may utilize blockchain to share the data with third parties in the way that offers global continuity. Open badge chains can be made part of blockchain.

Professional development is difficult to deliver – and without much creativity. Inputs that are trusted can help develop professional developments especially those securely organized via a strong blockchain-oriented system.

Current learning and talent management don’t work well. An open but secure approach can be used domestically and also after people depart from the organisation.

Apprenticeships are part of society around the world. In the UK, for instance three million apprenticeships will be taken care of via taxes. What can be gained via taxes can be tracked an centralized via blockchain.

Libraries can be buttressed by bitcoin. Today’s systems use centralized ledgers but blockchain can sustain a more significant authentication structure.

Micropayments are better than financial transactions that employ third parties that charge fees. Micropayments can be used for educational resources, etc. This another area where blockchain can help.

Over time blockchain will take apart hierarchical structures. The technology itself generates the focus and support trust, which stays with the technology itself. It is a disruption.

Traditionally institutions are sources of trust. But that can change with blockchain. Trust needs to move beyond educational brands.

The biggest problem is cultural, as brands are longstanding and reputable. But alternatives are necessary and they are coming. The bigger issue is how blockchain handled and how it affects the various aspects of education mentioned above.

Blockchain, need not create a centralized structure either. It can also simply encourage current trends, especially those regarding elements such as apprenticeships.

Learning by experience is a big part of this sort of perspective. Going to school to learn government mandates is not necessarily all that valid when it comes to the trade.

As an apprenticeship perspective becomes more widespread, the ability of individuals to learn their craft becomes more widespread as well.

Perhaps people should learn the basic skills, reading writing and arithmetic. But that doesn’t take more than a couple of years at the outside. In fact such skills can be practiced and perfected without school at all.

It is probably far more important for individuals to get at as much training in their professions as possible. The idea that young people have to take a certain amount of hours per year until 18 in order to graduate to a profession that has nothing to do with how they will make a living is fairly ludicrous.

The cryptocurrency being set up to encourage sharing of apprenticeship knowledge will hopefully benefit apprentices and masters around the world.

It is part of larger struggle with the way things have turned out after centuries of increasing government interference with the private sector. Now, finally, we begin to fight back.

Blockchain may be especially relevant when it comes to the environment, because it lets people build decentralized databases.

Blockchains are online databases that people trust because they are replicated in so many places. For instance they can make sure that sea food is fresh.

And blockchain allows wood products to be tracked from beginning to end so that people can be assured that the wood is what it is said to be.

Benefits are obvious.

The energy sector is going to be aided by blockchain via smart contracts. It is decentralized for one thing. It also makes a contribution to the Internet of Things.

Demand and supply can be left to computers once blockchain is part of the mix. And blockchain can help with renewable energy. It allows peer to peer trading as regards electricity from water power, solar power, etc. generated via rooftop.

Such local usage does away with long-distance usage. It reduces energy storage since the blockchain can figure out where energy is being produced and where it is needed.

Water

Once the system is decentralized, there is little waste because the waste water systems are also decentralized. They don’t pollute the ocean or introduce fluoride etc. the way centralized systems do.

Self sufficient water systems – from wastewater – can provide fuel for methane bio-gas generators which will produce nutrient rich liquid plant food. The Chinese have been doing for over 500 years safely with clay pipes and bamboo.

This removes dangerous methane from the greenhouse gases. Methane is 22 times more destructive than carbon dioxide – yet the centralized building code does not allow this. It is illegal in the US.

Water encourages peer-to-peer usage, unlike many other environmental resources that are more rigidly controlled by large corporations.

And as blockchain becomes more ubiquitous it will remove middlemen when it comes to water usage. The ability to computerize water availability will make it available when and where it is needed without delay.

Water and the environment generally will be aided by blockchain in numerous ways over time. Blockchain will reduce centralization even as the largest corporations are trying to strengthen it. And thus the results are not so apparent as these large corporations would like.

The Cold War created a continuous US military threat that demanded the US always be ready to fight. This became known as the military-industrial complex, which President Dwight Eisenhower warned about.

The idea has been that the military-industrial complex uses exaggeration and even outright falsehoods to drive up price for military goods and even to create whole new weapons.

Eisenhower worried that this would continue and even expand. However an article in Forbes entitled “Military-Industrial Complex Shrinks to One Percent of Economy” claims that the military-industrial complex is basically undone.

The federal budget only claims 22% of the economy, and defense in turn represents a mere one in every seven federal dollars (14% of the federal budget). Do the math, and it turns out that all that money Washington spends on the military only amounts to about 3% of the economy.

Furthermore, most of the defense budget is not spent on weapons, it is spent on items like military pay and benefits, training, maintenance and the like. The amount of money set aside for developing and procuring military equipment in the budget agreement Congress reached last week is $197 billion — a third of the $593 billion defense budget, and barely 1% of GDP (which stands at $19 trillion).

In Eisenhower’s time weapons spending was 44% of defense budget but that all changed once conscription ceased and the Vietnam war began to change attitudes about the military.

During the Bush years, Dick Cheney did away with many weapons programs and the “military-industrial complex” became a much less important part of the budget

Today the purchasing of weapons only takes up one percent of the budget. By contrast, healthcare takes ups 17 percent.

However there are other ways of looking at the military-industrial complex. When you calculate its influence rather than weapons purchases, you can include intelligence agencies and other impacts.

Who is to say intel agencies are not part of the broader scope of the military-industrial complex. Does military-industrial complex always have to mean “weapons purchases?”

The US probably has close to 20 intel agencies as this point. Intel agencies are a growth phenomenon. And they basically represent the military-industrial complex if one expands the definition slightly. As does Homeland Security.

These are authoritarian agencies as are the countries largest industrial corporations. The operating procedure is that “national security” is the most important part of the Capitol Hill agenda – just based on intel agencies alone.

But just as in the 1960s with the so-called Cold War, the underlying issues are fake. The USSR was created by Wall Street back in the ‘teens and the Cold War itself was also an artificial entity. Read Griffen’s Creature From Jekyll Island to learn more about that.

The US does not need the largest military operation in the world. The US probably does not need a large military operation at all. The US contains 350 million people. Military or not, it is not likely to be attacked anymore than say Brazil.

When it comes to blockchain in particular, challenges will probably come in two directions.

First there is the direct application of blockchain. Most large firms are not applying it properly or fully. As a result it is going to be less effective than it could be.

Second, entities that apply it more fully will have the advantage and thus they will perform better.

Of course the government can do things to discourage advantages that those who construct full blockchain companies will have. They can even try to ban peer-to-peer transactions. But over time such bans will fail. People will use the technology to which they’ve been exposed to.

The military-industrial complex has grown far beyond the military itself in our view. It is the military-intel-industrial complex and continues to grow as more and more false flags encourage its expansion.

The idea is to create one world government, and that remains on the agenda. On the other hand, as smaller governments and countries spring up, the world will be moving in the opposite direction.

This is a recipe for continued conflict and that is probably what will happen. But that is a great deal different than the creation of a new world order. Or a continued military-industrial complex.

In truth, the military industrial complex has not been fully challenged yet. But it will be. And there is no reason to assume that it will expand and succeed. Over time it well may fail, especially as blockchain style firms emerge.

A paper from Charities Aid Foundation says blockchain technology is generating a new way of managing charities.

Charities generate some $2 trillion per year. But charities have lots of trouble as well, especially when it comes to perceptions of corruption.

The report says blockchain technology could make the way people treat charities in a much different way. Trust and donations might rise a good deal.

Can tokens help with charitable giving? Can smart contracts make a difference? Can the blockchain give enough transparency to make charities more attractive. A public blockchain ledger can be seen by any user.

The ledger is run by users so costs are lessened. Blockchains can do away with third parties and gives ways people can show off assets digitally. Meanwhile ownership can be shown at any time.

BitGive Foundation is perhaps the world’s first digital charity. It makes common cause with other charities to raise more efficient transactions. Thus charities are an obvious candidate for change, the sooner the better.

For this reason, we may see a change when it comes to charities that happens before most of other industries. Charities may not be the first to fully convert, but they may be among the first.

Blockchain is becoming a major disruptor and real estate – property generally – is going to feel the effects very soon.

Blockchain is a distributed digital ledger that an almost unlimited amount of people to store information. Since there is no central storage the information is reliable and virtually unhackable.

It can use encryption to ensure it is kept private and results in a permanent record that is unalterable. Bitcoin is one application of blockchain. So are ethereum for smart contracts, and Abra, for smart wallets.

When it comes to real estate in particular, platforms are being developed that use smart contracts along with payments and property details in real time.

Right now with today’s fintech it might take three days or more to do the same thing.This can be known as an Internet of Finance, which is similar to an Internet of Things.

Of course regulators are watching this technology as well. And the technology is moving quickly. The World Economic Forum believes that up to 80 percent of top global banks will be involved with blockchain projects in 2017.

Business should be prepared. Collaboration should be sought to make sure fintech is properly utilized. Emerging technologies are intertwined with other business priorities as we move into 2018 and beyond.

But real estate and property purchases are among the areas that are the subject to the most change currently.

In Africa, Europe and South America, there are recent advances in how people buy and sell property. In such areas, there may be significant real estate that exists without title. Blockchain can allow people to give title back to properties and then buy or sell those properties immediately.

Generally, blockchain technology makes buying and selling properties more effective and efficient. It can cut the turnaround time for purchasing such properties dramatically. It can make may unsellable properties usable again.

There are many areas where blockchain may be useful but one place where the disruption is most evident is in real estate. That is why real estate is among the first areas where blockchain is being applied in a major way.

Property will be one of the first industries to see big changes as a result of blockchain.

Outdated health care is coming into the modern era. PokitDok will provide a blockchain ledger named Dokchain that will track customers history and more.

Hospital staff will be less involved with bureaucracy and more involved with patients. Some explain this could upgrade health care. The bottom line here is that hospitals, insurance agencies and other healthcare entities are too often involved in middleman work. Such agencies are going to be done away with once blockchain bites harder.

This is not just theoretical. Blockchain is peer-to-peer and sooner or later doctor patient relationships will be re-established. Profits and losses will become a dominant form of relationship again. Many will shy away from universal health care because it has little to do with the best treatments.

Ancient Indian and Chinese medicine will become more popular once people can have access to different kind of health information.

The modern Big Pharma methodology will become increasingly embattled as other forms of medicine come to the fore. Big Pharma medications are generated by plants mostly in the Amazon. But rather than use the plants, Big Pharma attempts to make medicine from chemicals that can be substituted for plants. It does this so it can retain the patent.

There is a war underway and it has barely been joined. But as fintech becomes more commonplace, the battles will commence in earnest. Healthcare and medicine constitute a mighty battlefield and the consequences will play out over years and even decades.

Many energy firms are discussing ways that blockchain can be helpful with transactions. Peer-to-peer trading is next on the agenda. Blockchain-based firms offer efficient interactions between buyers and sellers.

Smart contracts reduce the complexities of trading, along with cost. Blockchain can exand markets and customers, giving greater transparency.

Blockchain technology appears in more and more markets. But questions still linger: Is it an effective disruptor and how much will it disrupt the industry?

Currently, the largest energy firms may be experimenting with blockchain but it may not be the largest companies that ultimately utilize it.

Removing middlemen may ultimately reduce the size of large corporations, perhaps dramatically so. But largest firms are overly large because of corporate personhood, intellectual property rights, regulations and central banks.

Absent government force to swell the largest corporations, these corporations would be much smaller and better able to negotiate disruptions.

But disruption is coming no matter the size of corporations. And the kind of disruption that will be evident in the near future will take down even the most gigantic outfit.

Exxon for instance was against US removal from today’s climate accords. One reason is because large amounts of regulation benefit large corporations at the expense of smaller ones.

But when distributed ledgers are recorded via various nodes, then the record becomes clear right away. And when the record is clear, then the ability to create a blockchain-based system becomes immediately available. Middlemen are no longer necessary.